Her (2013) | Movie Review

Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johannson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara

This film is a telling of another intricate kind of love story that may not be far to happen in the years ahead. Set in the distant future where every technological gadget is voice-operated, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is shown struggling to understand what has gone wrong with his marriage with his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara) and turns his attention to a new operating system with artificial intelligence and a capability to adapt to its environment. Having been given a female voice (Scarlett Johannson), she then names herself "Samantha" after reading a whole book of names in less than a second.

Theodore eventually grew fond of Samantha in the coming days and began to adapt human traits for herself. She would later ask him what he would do to her if she had a physical body, which he answers that he would touch her and make love with her. The intimacy between them would deepen and they soon had sex, in a manner similar to what we call "phone sex."

This film effectively strikes us with the fact that technology can do so much things in our everyday lives, but yet, it also delivers a troubling possibility of what it might give us in the future with the existence of operating systems that have almost human consciousness. I cannot help but think about the security of one's privacy if ever we would reach this kind of technology in the future. Although the film focuses on Samantha's  rapid evolution in the human field of senses and the eventual conflict that arises, one cannot but think in the side of his/her head about the probable side effects of possessing such system.

The biggest effect of this happened in the later part of the movie when Theodore became entirely attached to Samantha, that he consequently fell into panic when the operating system would not go online. It turned out, after Samantha finally responded, that she and other OSes had undergone a huge system upgrade. Theodore would learn that he was not the only user that Samantha responds to and even fell in love with. Simultaneously, she could in fact interact to hundreds more of users. The heartbreak this caused Theodore, who had felt deep emotions toward Samantha, is pure human and understandable. Later on it became evident the possibility that the system would no longer be available for them, after going on an evolution beyond human capacity and yearning to explore more of their existence.

This film ends with Theodore going over to his longtime friend Amy (Amy Adams), who was also in grief of losing her own OS. They went to the rooftop of her apartment building and watched the sunrise together. The message this sequence entails maybe is the most important, that no matter the advent of high-technology, the greatest emotions are still stored in a human mind.